The authoress was present at the time when Mr. Smith pronounced this eulogium upon her verses; and she used laughingly to tell how unexpectedly the compliment came upon her, and how she shrunk down upon her seat, in order to screen herself from the observation of those around her.
| [7] | It was afterwards taken as the groundwork for one of the most popular Italian operas of the time, the “Agnese” of Paer. |
| [8] | Written by Dr. Brown. |
CHAPTER VII.
THE TRIALS OF GENIUS; DOMESTIC TROUBLES; LETTERS TO MRS. TAYLOR; JOURNEY TO FRANCE; ARRIVAL AT PARIS; THE LOUVRE; THE FIRST CONSUL; CHARLES JAMES FOX; THE SOIRÉE; KOSCIUSKO.
We have seen how diligently Mrs. Opie laboured during the year 1801, and with what success her efforts had been crowned. Yet this was the severest season of domestic anxiety and trouble, she was, as a wife, destined to experience. She tells us, in her Memoir of her husband, that although he had a picture in the Exhibition of 1801, which was universally admired, and purchased as soon as beheld, yet “he saw himself at the end of that year, and the beginning of the next, almost wholly without employment; and even my sanguine temper yielding to the trial, I began to fear that, small as our expenditure was, it must become still smaller. Not that I allowed myself to own that I desponded; on the contrary, I was forced to talk to him of hopes, and to bid him look forward to brighter prospects, as his temper, naturally desponding, required all the support possible. But gloomy and painful indeed were those three alarming months, and I consider them as the severest trial that I experienced during my married life. However, this despondency did not make him indolent; he continued to paint regularly as usual; and no doubt by that means increased his ability to do justice to the torrent of business which soon after set in towards him, and never ceased to flow till the day of his death.”
There is something very touching in these few and simple words. The earnest hopeful nature of the wife supporting the desponding spirits of her gifted husband. Like all men of true genius, he was subject to dark shadows and melancholy broodings. He aspired high, studied much, laboured hard, and was too painfully alive to his deficiencies, ever to rest satisfied with the point to which he had attained; the voice within cried ever, “higher!” and he must run until he fell. “During the nine years that I was his wife, (she continues,) I never saw him satisfied with any one of his productions, and often, very often, have I seen him enter my sitting room, and throwing himself in an agony of despondence on the sofa, exclaim, ‘I never, never shall be a painter, as long as I live!’”
Happily for women they have, in the little domestic cares of every day life, a source of employment and interest, which, compelling their attention, diverts their thoughts into wholesome channels, and saves them from uselessly brooding over evils they cannot avert. The domestic ménage of the painter’s household had to be governed, its mistress tells us, with a strict and watchful economy, and an observant eye must be kept upon all that went on there. But this was not all; as a mistress, the conduct of her servants appears to have occasioned her no small trouble, and to her faithful confidante she reveals her anxieties on more than one occasion; from two of these letters we find that she learned by experience, what she afterwards described with her pen; the first letter seems almost a comment upon one of her tales on “Lying,” or rather to have furnished the text for it. Both must have been written early in the year 1802, as in the month of August following, the journey to Paris took place.